You can make an archive from the SD rootfs first on another computer, copy the archive to a USB stick.
Then, you boot from the SD card, mount the internal drive (sda) and delete the existing rootfs. Extract the archived rootfs from the USB stick in its place.

I think the armhf demo image contains an older version of the kernel so you may want to backup /lib/modules and restore it after you put the armhf root onto the Efikia. The initrd would also likely need to be updated too. I can try and test installing the armhf image to my efika's internal storage later tonight and write some steps here, then I would know for sure.

Do the same thing Johan suggested (make a tarball of the SD card). You will find a script that does this ON THE INSTALLER CARD for the standard Maverick (it's called maketarball). All you need to give it is the root directory and a location for the tarball (it will perhaps call it maverick-date.tar.gz though, sorry).

You can then get the installer card, replace the /home/oem/maverick-* tarball with your tarball and it will install that. If you change the name, edit /home/oem/oem-installer too (it's something like line 8).

We've been shipping a self-installing SD card for a little while now. We're about to make more of an effort with armhf as official Ubuntu releases past Maverick are basically not usable on ARM platforms (too many bugs, and yes I have Pandas and Beagles to compare; they're worse). There will be a Live (i.e. desktop), self-installing SD card before the end of the year. I am kind of waiting for the archive to stabilize a little for a few features though.

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If I'm deciphering your suggestion(s), here are the steps one could take to install Debian locally:

Now the SB booted fine and kernel boot messages appeared on screen, but I got a blank screen.
Got a shell with ALT+F1 to log in, but no luck.
It returns "login incorrect" with demo and root default passwords.